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UW–Madison police end inquiry after finding pig video used footage from Australia
University police say they found no evidence that activist Ryan Blum entered campus to film pigs being stunned with carbon dioxide. Investigators determined the video he shared appears to combine edited, publicly available footage, including a clip recorded at an Australian slaughterhouse in 2015.
MADISON, Wis. — University of Wisconsin–Madison police say they found no evidence that recent graduate Ryan Blum entered a campus facility to secretly film pigs undergoing carbon dioxide stunning, and have ended their investigation into his claim.
In a statement released Oct. 24, UWPD said the video Blum promoted appears to have been heavily edited from publicly available clips, including footage from facilities not affiliated with UW–Madison. The university said a segment matches video recorded in 2015 at a slaughterhouse near Benalla, Australia.
Blum said in September that he had planned for months to enter the university’s Meat Science & Animal Biologics Discovery Building and record the process. UW–Madison previously confirmed that the facility has a carbon dioxide system but said it could not verify where the footage was made.
The university described the building as a research and training facility with commercial-grade equipment and said carbon dioxide anesthesia is commonly used in U.S. food processing to reduce animal stress. It also said the facility is inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and kept secure to protect workers, students and food produced there.
Blum had not responded by the time of publication to a request for comment about whether he still stood by his claim, according to the report.